


Your Own Stuffed Cephalopod

by NeverwinterThistle



Category: Kraken - China Mieville
Genre: Developing Relationship, Extended Scene, Friendship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-21
Updated: 2018-11-21
Packaged: 2019-08-27 01:32:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16692835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeverwinterThistle/pseuds/NeverwinterThistle
Summary: Billy and Dane moved through the amusement arcade with a purpose the crowds around them lacked.





	Your Own Stuffed Cephalopod

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pollitt](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pollitt/gifts).



Billy and Dane moved through the amusement arcade with a purpose the crowds around them lacked. Machine to machine, skeletal mobs to zombies to dead-eyed little green men, and Billy’s aim was improving. Now, he hit more than he missed. Soon he would hardly miss at all.

“Breathe,” Dane would say as he found his footing in front of each new game, plastic gun gripped tight. “Let the shakes pass, that’s just the adrenaline. You got to move beyond it. There you go. _Nice_.” He and Billy drew some glances from the teens around them, partly for their age, and partly for how mismatched a pair they made; Dane’s muscular bulk and soldier stillness, Billy’s glasses and untidy hair, his freckles. Dane ignored the looks. After a while, Billy did too.

“Your grip’s off,” Dane would tell him, until he no longer needed to. Or, “Pay attention. Watch the screen, nowhere else. I’ll keep an eye out. That’s not your job. Watch.” Or, as Billy's aim improved and his confidence grew with it, as he beat bosses and formed kill streaks, “Mind your footing. Stand like I showed you.”

Billy stood as he was showed; if he was off, even a little, Dane would correct him, crisp and uncompromising, a hand on Billy’s shoulder or hip to push him back into place.

And maybe he lingered, or maybe not. Billy wouldn’t have minded at all. There was, he thought, some miniscule hesitancy, some unacknowledged lack of haste as Dane pulled his upper arm into a better shape.

Or maybe he imagined it. Human minds, human _memories_ were not reliable. That was why they needed angels.

On the way to the next game, Billy stopped before the rows of stuffed toy prizes, their beady eyes unblinking. They reminded him of the Darwin’s specimen maze, walls and walls of the pickled and preserved, staring out as he walked past. He was struck with a pang of missing it. Like a lover, like a childhood home, he felt keenly his own absence from those echoing halls.

Dane had kept walking. He turned, found Billy left behind him, and came back with a roll of his eyes.

“What?” he said. He did not quite jab Billy’s ribs with an elbow, but there was an air about him as if he was considering it. “You looking to win Wati over with that…yellow mouse thing? Better try harder than that, he has actual standards.” He was a solid stability at Billy’s side; his presence muscled its way between Billy and the sadness, and would not let it past. Maybe he didn’t mean to do it. Maybe he never realised. Still, Billy was grateful.

“Not Wati,” he said. “I was hoping they’d have something squiddy. Don’t tell me you never had your own stuffed cephalopod as a kid.”

“Can’t say that I did.”

“My Little Cuttlefish?”

Dane did not laugh, although he clearly wanted to. “Mate, the way you think. Way your mind works.”

“So I suppose I won’t be winning you a prize squid with my nerves of steel and unbelievable aim,” Billy said. “That takes some of the shine out of the day.”

Dane did laugh, this time. He put an arm around Billy’s shoulders, pushing him away from the stuffed animals and towards the next game. “That's a shame. I’ll just have to settle for a teddy bear like everyone else.”

He pushed Billy onwards, putting him through his paces, drill sergeant-relentless. _Rambo_ to _Paradise Lost_ to _Terminator_ spinoffs, the pixelated hordes launching assaults he was coached through. Ignore the colours and noise, the distractions. See movement, take aim, don’t miss. Trust in your skills, your training. Doesn’t matter if it’s a zombie, an alien, a low-budget mutant blob; that is your enemy. You take it down.

Billy broke up the training with questions. He had to; the repetition would have bored him otherwise, urgent or not. He lacked Dane’s patience, the true believer’s discipline, the hours and hours kneeling on cold church stone to pray without complaint. Billy simply couldn’t maintain that level of focus, and so he asked questions.

He didn’t dare name Grisamentum or the Tattoo so openly, much less Goss and Subby. He asked instead about the knuckleheads, and his interest was genuine (but not without agenda, not without the too-vivid memory of Dane’s delighted chuckle the last time Billy had voiced incredulous questions, _God, Billy, the way your mind works_ , said in a tone Billy had preserved and did not plan to forget). He asked how they ate; again, how they saw; how they thought; and what, exactly, did they look like naked, because “I try not to think about it” was no sort of answer at all.

Dane humoured him occasionally. Non-committal, never allowing Billy to grow distracted from his targets. It was plain that some of the things Billy found most striking had never occurred to him; for a second, Billy felt the gap between them. They had moved in different worlds. Even now, with one foot in Dane’s, he still clung to the old rules of the space he had inhabited his whole life. It was not an easy journey. This caterpillar shifted restless in its chrysalis. He let his soldier’s stance grow sloppy just the once, so that Dane would move up behind him, lean in to correct.

It helped.

“Look at you,” Dane said at last, as the final boss died in a flurry of pixelated blood and magma. “Stone cold. Stand up with the best of them, you could. I’ll have you at my back any day. Ready to leave?”

“Yes,” Billy said, then changed his mind. “Actually, no. Wait here for me a minute?” He cut through the middle of a teen group, boisterous shouts in his ear, and then out the other side. Checked over his shoulder, and was pleased to see that Dane had not followed, that he trusted Billy enough to allow him this freedom.

When he returned, teddy bear in hand, Dane’s face went through a multitude of emotions.

“What, you thought I was joking?” Billy asked. “Come on. You knew I would.”

“Billy, Billy,” Dane said, accepting the large brown bear he was offered. “You charmer. No one ever did that for me before.” His expression was deadpan, _I cannot believe you right now_. The bear tucked neatly into the crook of his arm. And as they left the arcade and went to find a suitably unattended car, Billy did not miss Dane ignoring opportunities to dispose of it, the stupid-looking thing flopping over his forearm. Keeping it for Wati, of course. Why else?

Outside the arcade, cacophony faded into ear-ringing evening stillness. Billy kept watch while Dane started hotwiring, enjoying the breeze after the sticky heat of too many machines and too many people. Just once, he glanced behind him at the bent line of Dane’s shoulders and the stuffed bear sat on the roof of the car.

They would do this again, Billy decided. Afterwards, when the world was safe and saved, and they were no longer hunted, and he was back home with his specimens, and his more gossipy colleagues (Kath, or maybe Brendan) asked what he had planned for the weekend-

 _Going to an arcade with this guy I met_ , he’d tell them, performing embarrassment at his own nerdiness, still discernibly excited. _He’s great, we get along really well. Ex-military. Just a bit of fun. We’ll see how it goes._

The fantasy pleased him; he tried to picture how it would be, with the wariness gone from Dane’s shoulders, and the pressure gone from Billy’s grip on an unending sequence of plastic guns. How they might act, left to their own devices. Billy was not uncompetitive; he suspected Dane would be worse. That might pose problems, but he didn’t think so. They were a team. How well they matched each other, covering weakness with strength. How quickly they had become Billy-and-Dane, Dane-and-Billy. How easy it felt.

“Done,” Dane said, straightening. “Get in. Need to find us somewhere to crash for the night.”

“I can drive.”

“Nah, mate,” Dane said. “You did good today. Worked real hard. You get some sleep, you’ve earnt it.” He was not the type to fuss over anyone; his praise came sparingly, and was valuable. Touched, Billy settled into the passenger seat, removing his glasses and tilting his head back against the rest. He did not protest when the stuffed bear was dropped into his lap. It only seemed fair.

“Wake me when we get there.”

“Yeah. Sure.”

Billy opened his eyes briefly, blinking at Dane’s blurred shape, his indistinct but familiar features. “Dane?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks.”

“Welcome.”

After that, they drove in silence.

**Author's Note:**

> The arcade scene has always been one of my favourites, but it’s so short! Thank you for giving me the excuse I needed to expand on it.


End file.
